Setbacks
by Nightwitch87
Summary: "And the happiness you were looking for out there really might have been back there somewhere, irretrievable now." - Bensidy, Canon. This is a sequel to "Surrender", but bears little resemblance to it so reading "Surrender" first is not necessary.


**Author's Note:** **Uh…surprise! For you and me both. As the description says, this is a follow-up one-shot to "Surrender", but it carries virtually no continuity other than the narrative perspective, so you don't need to have read "Surrender" to get this. It's basically (my version of) show canon and I think it will become clear pretty quickly when this is set. If you have any thoughts that you would like to share, or virtual paper balls to throw at me, reviews are always greatly appreciated. Seriously. They make me want to hug you. And if you enjoyed this and your review was going to be "please continue", you might want to check out "Passing Boats", which is another, unrelated continuation. The order goes: 1.) Surrender, 2.) Setbacks, 3.) Passing Boats. Enjoy in moderation!**

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" _In my dream I know I am falling. But there is no up or down, no walls or sides or ceilings, just the sensation of cold and darkness everywhere. I am so scared I could scream. But when I open my mouth, nothing happens. And I wonder if you fall forever and never touch down, is it really still falling? I think I will fall forever."  
― __Lauren Oliver_ _,_ _Before I Fall_

* * *

[You awake?] It all began with a simple late night text that was code for "I need to talk". You had been glancing at your phone on and off again for the past three hours, so in a sense, it was a relief when it came, no matter how surprised you were.

[yeah. Want commpany?] you replied faster than your phone could autocorrect the words.

[no it's fine] The way she typed and paused, typed and paused and presumably deleted, was all that it took for you to make up your mind, to splash some water on your face, throw on some clothes and get in the car despite what she had told you over the phone. Because if she really meant it, she could always tell you to fuck off and there would be no harm done, but if she didn't…well, that wasn't something you could make right again. You had a bad track record with not showing up, and your whole weird routine of I-want-you-here-but-not-but-I'm-fine-but-you-should-be-here seemed almost forgotten now. There is no question about this.

So here you are in the elevator with your key unused, the doorbell unrung and only a text from you to avoid startling her, an [okay] from her that made all the difference, that gave you permission to come in. And you are so fucking terrified. You want to check in on her, but you don't know what to expect and what will you even say to her? You can't entirely recall the jumbled words that came out of your mouth on the phone only hours ago, although they must have contained some form of a confused explanation about being undercover. You doubt she was in a state to even hear it. The eerie calmness in her voice, the flat, dissociated tone, did not bode well.

Your feet carry you to the door on autopilot and you text again, because having someone knock at your apartment door in the middle of the night, even when you know who it is, doesn't seem like a good idea right now. You can make out quiet steps behind it, which stop abruptly. Nothing happens. For one second. For another, endless second. You pretend you can hear the echo of your pulse, and hers too, since all that separates you now is a piece of wood. The moment drags out unbearably, and suddenly, it's as if facial expressions don't come naturally to you anymore and you need to _think_ about it, assemble your mouth, your forehead, your cheeks into something smooth that you hope isn't a grimace.

She opens the door like it's a piece of heavy metal, holding on to it while both of you stand in the frame.

And you freeze. Completely.

She takes a shuddering breath, pushing a strand of hair back behind her ear. "Hey."

"Liv" you croak. Your first instinct is that you want to embrace her, but you don't. It's when you see her that the tragic irony of the situation strikes fully. You have been here before. This is almost normal for you – some kind of messed up normal. And yet when you last saw her, it was all non-goodbyes in the hope of moving on, finding some kind of happiness that must exist somewhere out there in the universe. And now _this_.

You are relieved that there are no visible injuries you can detect, then mentally smack yourself for the thought. It's not as if you can see what might be going on underneath those clothes that aren't hers, and last time, the evidence was revealed to you bit by bit, burn by cut by bite mark. What Lewis likes to inflict- _No, don't think about that now._ She looks exhausted more than anything, her face a mask you recognise too well. Her dark eyes are glassy as she considers you, really looking at you for a moment.

"Come in." She takes a step back, and you close the door quickly behind you, leaving it up to her to turn the key that is stuck in it. She turns all the locks.

"I'm glad you're…shit, I'm…"

"I'm not hurt or anything. You didn't need to come."

"C'mon, of course-"

"Yeah, I get it. Um. He's dead and the girl's okay, physically at least." She states it clinically, hugging that sweater a little more tightly around herself.

"What about you?" The girl, even Lewis, are secondary now.

"I'm…" she trails off, omitting the customary "fine". "It's over and done with."

You simply keep staring at her like she is a mirage. In many ways, she is. It's as if you have been catapulted into the past. You notice her rubbing her wrist, and it twists your insides.

"I don't wanna talk" she says, a pre-emptive strike into the pause. "I can't."

"That's fine. You don't have to." You want to know what happened, but you kind of knew you wouldn't get that story right now –or probably ever- and it's nagging at you already. It's also a relief. You don't have to react or figure this out tonight. You're happy she let you in at all, but now you are standing here and it's all painfully familiar, yet you can't pretend it isn't different, too.

"I need to sleep. I have to be at IAB first thing in the morning and explain the whole thing and I don't know…it's been a long…it…" She moves her head as if to shake something off, as if she had water in her ears.

"Hey. It's okay. One step at a time. Right now, get some rest. I'll just…hang out."

She glances towards the bedroom, decides against it and sits down on the sofa. You follow instinctively, squeezing into the corner to give her space.

"I'm just gonna…" she mumbles, scooting down to lie down with her head facing toward you, her legs propped up in front of her.

"Yeah." You put your arm up on the back of the couch. It seems silly that you should be so awkward around her, but there is literally no script for what to do when your (ex-?)girlfriend-slash-still-roommate-slash-woman-you-love gets abducted for the second time within a year and…who knows what else. He already did everything to her last time. What new torments could he have come up with? _Well, not everything. Maybe._

Somehow, her head winds up halfway on your leg as she turns onto her side and curls up into a fetal position. This can't be comfortable, but the simple physical contact is oddly reassuring. She is still here. You are still here. You can hear her breathing, the quiet sound filling the air around you, and this feels like home. How you wish that it could just be that, a safe place rather than the place where everything bad happens. The fresh start was a lie.

"I'm sorry I wasn't here." If you don't say it now, you may never get a chance.

"You weren't supposed to be. That was the deal."

"Still. If I'd known…I mean, that stuff really doesn't matter now. If I'd known…" You can't even remember why you agreed to what you did, that dumb little dance of gradual disentanglement where you would spend a lot of time UC and go on sort of living beside each other while also looking for another place to rent and trying to get out of that lease. It was basically what you had been doing in the weeks before, minus the part with looking for a new place to live.

"It will matter again. I can't do this now, Bri. I didn't want to be alone tonight but that doesn't mean-"

"I get it. It's fine. I, uh, I wanted to be here either way."

"It wouldn't have made a difference."

Somehow, you really doubt that. You can't picture a universe where she would plan to go after Lewis and you would just be like "okay, see you soon". But then of course, she wouldn't exactly have discussed that plan with you, and maybe it wasn't even a plan but a spur of the moment decision. Saving a little girl or needing _him_ to be gone or something. It makes you irrationally angry with her although you shouldn't be after everything she has been through. But this martyrdom of hers, this not looking after herself first, is what you can't deal with. You can't be with someone when you always have to be afraid for them. You can't watch someone hurt like that. How exactly did she think this would play out? She was damn lucky to get out of this alive twice. Of course, if you had been there, if you had come over last year in the first place, none of this would ever have gone this far. If you had been a better a boyfriend, not a shitty one who takes off after fights, who cancels at the last minute, who disappears to go undercover. The fresh guilt sticks like an additional layer on top of the old coat. You are so, so sorry and it doesn't change a thing.

You can feel a wetness on your thigh, seeping through your pants, and the rage evaporates like smoke. Your tongue lies like lead in your mouth. There is no comfort left to give. It's unfair, after months of struggling, how it begins all over again like a nightmare that will never end. The whole scenario, the little orange boxes of pills on the table and her alone with them, scares you more than you want to admit. You reach down to touch her shoulder, but pull back when she flinches at the contact. "Sorry." It leaves you unsettled. This _is_ like starting all over again.

"It's fine." Her voice sounds constricted. "You can."

You stroke her upper back, murmuring some stupid promise about how it's going to be all right until you both fall silent and there is nothing left to do but sit, frozen in time with the shards of your life around you. You think about how she was doing better, objectively speaking, how you both put on a brave face that last day and broke it off so amicably, like mature adults making the right decision. You remember how you believed it was right, that you were tired, that she deserved more, that you weren't cut out for this, that you wanted a fresh start. You try hard not to think about what it would be like if he had killed her, how close a call it must have been. You try not to miss her when she is right beside you, because there is no point in having tears in your own eyes when it's all over now. You think about the trial and Lewis' smug grin, and how much you hate him still and his being dead doesn't lessen that feeling at all. You wonder what could have been. You think about Liv and second chances and how you maybe had a window at one point, but then things got so screwed up that you couldn't row back. And now you are just two people in a lifeboat with no shore in sight. And the happiness you were looking for out there really might have been back there somewhere, irretrievable now.

-2-

You wake up in pain. Pure, unrelenting pain in your joints. You don't even want to try and move your neck because you are pretty sure it would break and your head would roll right off your shoulders. As you blink into the sunlight that has fallen on you, you recognise the familiar surroundings and, for one blissful moment, the only thought on your mind is wonder at how you wound up asleep sprawled out on the sofa with your head resting at an angle on the back and your body covered in a blanket that feels too warm. It is safe and familiar. But then you move, the smooth material glides off your legs, and you remember all at once, just like that. It comes rolling back like a wave that's about to break right above you, pulling you out to sea, and she is not beside you, and the dread is unbearable.

"Liv? Olivia?" You jump to your feet, trying hard to keep the panic out of your voice as you scan the table for a note or anything of the sort.

"Yeah?" She comes out of the bedroom fully dressed in a suit and looking…nice? The only thing that's missing is the jacket. The IAB meeting…shit. What time is it even?

"Oh." You gawk at her stupidly as she moves around, picking things up here and there, looking for something then changing her mind halfway. Everything would be business as usual, an ordinary morning, if it weren't for her erratic movements and the way she completely avoids eye contact.

"Your phone buzzed a couple of times, but I didn't want to wake you up."

"Okay." Tucker probably. You have no idea what he could want, and you don't particularly care. Chances are he was just going to remind you to steer clear of this, anyway. Which is probably smart thinking on his end, seeing as how you have already gone through every conceivable way of finding out whatever you can about what happened, every string to pull from emotionally blackmailing your coworkers to actually blackmailing your commanding officer.

She walks over to the window and opens it as wide as possible, which isn't very wide, since you have those super safe, super generic city windows that aren't really there to air out a room and won't let anyone jump to their death. You catch yourself at the horrible thought that this might be a good thing. When you open them, you only wind up filling the apartment with smog. It's better than the stifling heat in your East-facing residence though, where the sun illuminates specks of dust dancing in the air.

"You want some coffee or something?" you ask. You know better than to tell her she should eat something before heading out. After all, you've done this a time or two before.

"I doubt caffeine is what I need right now."

"Right. Or tea? I could make some herbal tea."

She lets out an annoyed sound somewhere between a sigh and a scoff. "No, thanks. I should get going." Her answer is full of stilted politeness, as if you were a stranger. As if you didn't know what all of this means.

You nod, your stomach sinking by the second. You should be calm for her sake, but a few months at IAB have taught you that this won't be easy, especially as this is the second incident involving Lewis and her televised confession looms over her. But it's like she said on the phone, she didn't kill him, and even if she had – who wouldn't be sorry? It would have been self-defence. What was she supposed to do, provide CPR? That sick, sick motherfucker-bastard-pig-lump-of-human-shit.

"Bri?" Your anger must have shown on your face, because she is making eye contact now, and it's not good. It's both vigilant and fearful, and she should never be looking at you like that.

"It'll be okay." They are empty words, since you can't promise that, "they just need a statement to close the file."

"I'll tell the truth."

"That's generally good, um…but…"

"The truth and nothing but."

"Okay, but-"

"No buts" she cuts you off in a tone that makes it clear that you don't get another say in this. But she is reeling from the past few days, she is not taking a lawyer, and you can't shake the feeling that she is about to do some stupid noble thing (like going after the perp who kidnapped and tortured her for four days by herself). No one can protect her from herself, you know that much, and she has a weird thing about punishing herself, and being incredibly selfless and self-centered all in one. No, no, no. This is bad, details or no details.

"I'll give you a ride." If you posed it as a question, she would just refuse.

"I don't think that's a good idea."

"I'm not on that case, so it's not a conflict of interest."

You can tell from her irritation that you are way off the mark here. "I'd rather be alone right now, to be honest."

You stand undecided for a moment. You just want to reach out and hold her, kiss her forehead and promise that you'll be there for her come what may, but that wouldn't be right now, where you don't have pre-defined roles. It would be too much physical contact either way, and you know it's all she can do to hold it together for that meeting right now. This is not the time to fall apart.

"I'm gonna go" she mumbles vaguely.

"Talk to you later, okay?" There is an unspoken assumption there that you will still be here. That you're not going anywhere. She doesn't acknowledge it. She doesn't deny it, either. She is gazing at a spot on the wall behind you.

So you are going to say the unspeakable, to make real the possibility you are not allowed to even think. "Hey, whatever happens…"

"Nothing's going to happen."

"Sure."

"But I'll be-"

"I know."


End file.
